Ars@WWDC: Keynote expectations and coverage preview

What do you expect out of Monday's WWDC 2009 keynote? We summarize the rumors …

WWDC 2009 is upon us, and the Ars Technica crew is on the ground, ready to bring you the latest on this week's announcements. The keynote is scheduled for Monday morning at 10am Pacific Time, led by Phil Schiller and Apple's team of executives. As usual, Ars will be doing live keynote coverage during the event, so be sure to load up the aforelinked page before the show starts to get in on the goings-on.

What will be announced at the keynote? Apple has already said that it plans to give developers a final Developer Preview release of Mac OS X 10.6, code named Snow Leopard, during the conference, so we can expect to get a more in-depth look at it during the keynote. By most developer accounts, however, Snow Leopard isn't expected to actually be released this summer—instead, most people familiar with the operating system expect a preview at WWDC and a final release date in the fall.

Most of you reading this, however, are undoubtedly waiting to hear about the yet-to-be-announced iPhone update. Apple is expected to announce a release date for iPhone OS 3.0, which the company previewed to us in March. There's no doubt that the updated version of the mobile OS will bring more features and functionality to all iPhone users, but new iPhone hardware is all but guaranteed to be in the pipeline as well. In March, we found evidence of new hardware in the works, though the next flagship iPhone is probably going to look quite similar to the current iPhone 3G. The specs, however, are supposedly going to bring us more processing power, RAM, and storage space (good news for those of you with big iTunes libraries). Most reasonable Apple-watchers (ourselves included) don't expect the hardware to be available until later this month or July, though.

There are a couple announcements that may come out of AT&T tomorrow as well, depending on how far along the carrier is in preparing its network. Tethering support surfaced earlier this year in betas of iPhone OS 3.0, indicating that Apple and AT&T may have finally hammered something out that will allow users to make use of the iPhone's data connection on their laptops. In fact, several developers confirmed that tethering over USB works—it's just a matter of when this feature will be announced. AT&T may also announce cheaper, tiered data plans for the iPhone sometime soon, though recent comments from AT&T execs indicate that such a plan is still in the works and not yet in the final stages.

Finally, there's the slightly crazier group of rumors that includes things like an iPhone light/nano (rumored since before the original iPhone was even released) and a possible "media pad." The last we heard about these possible devices, Apple was said to be in talks with Verizon to launch them, so there's no telling whether we'll hear anything about them this week or at a later date, if ever.

Outside of the keynote, we here at Ars plan to bring you some glimpses into what the developer community is excited about in Snow Leopard, iPhone OS 3.0, new hardware, and whatever else may pop up. You can follow all the goings-on at Infinite Loop or at our special WWDC-only page. If you use Twitter, check out our ArsWWDC account for musings from the staff and links to our WWDC-related coverage.